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Star Trek: The Next Generation/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
Star Trek: The Next Generation/Headscratchers (view source)
Revision as of 22:08, 19 February 2015
, 9 years ago→You get promoted only for escaping
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**** If he wanted to be a petulant child about it, sure.
** Will Riker didn't get promoted for "escaping", he got promoted for the years of service he rendered afterwards and the actions he took during those years. Thomas stays at the rank he was at because, you know, he hasn't done anything to earn a promotion. Yes, he survived being stranded, but getting promoted for that is just as silly as the idea of getting promoted for not getting stranded. They probably gave Thomas a bunch of back pay and a crash course to bring him up to speed and let him have his pick of assignments appropriate to his rank. The fact that he hasn't been promoted since then was probably a sign of him simply not being the same sort of dedicated officer Will was anymore, as evidenced by him ditching, joining the Maquis, and stealing a warship. You don't get a Starfleet promotion just for time served, and if Thomas wanted one for that it proves that he didn't deserve it.
*** Actually, real-life US military practice is that personnel who are missing in action or POWs still have their cases submitted to promotion boards at the appropriate time, even if the guy's been lost down a hole for the past ten years. In practice, promotion for such people is essentially automatic and happens at the average time-in-grade. Given the unique circumstances of the case, the fact that Thomas Riker was MIA during the time that William Riker was given a merit promotion should not have prevented him from retroactively receiving that same promotion when his existence was discovered, given that Thomas Riker was essentially the same person who was given that promotion and only diverged from him later. He has ''every'' reason to complain about unfair treatment.
== Practicing starship combat? When was the last time ''we'' fought anyone? ==
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